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  • October 2016 (Revised March 2017)
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Airbnb in Amsterdam (A)

By: Mitchell Weiss, Emer Moloney and Vincent Dessain
  • Format:Print
  • | Language:English
  • | Pages:15
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Abstract

In February 2014, Amsterdam became the first city to issue new regulations specifically to allow home sharing. Airbnb's Molly Turner, global head of civic partnerships; her colleagues at the San Francisco–based home sharing platform; and her counterparts in Amsterdam's city leadership now had to make the new rules function well. By the summer of 2014, the question of how exactly to do that remained unsettled. A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that Airbnb was negotiating with Amsterdam officials to supplement the new home-sharing rules was not materializing. Turner was hearing that the company’s proposed commitments that spanned education on regulations, enforcement assistance, and tax collection might not be enough to secure what would be Airbnb’s broadest partnership with any city anywhere. Nanette Schippers was Amsterdam’s Advisor on the Sharing Economy in its Innovation Office and its lead at the negotiating table that summer. She was worried by the standstill, too. A primary reason for the impasse in the negotiations was that Amsterdam wanted access to Airbnb’s data in order to enforce the new laws more easily, while Airbnb sought to protect user privacy. For Airbnb, privacy, precedents, and platform principles were at stake. For Amsterdam, it was a matter of making sure that the historic city did not become “Venice, or Florence, or ‘Disneyland’”; that it wasn’t overrun by visitors and that locals weren’t crowded out. Could the two parties now find dry land?

Keywords

Public Entrepreneurship; Innovation; Sharing Economy; Amsterdam; Airbnb; Molly Turner; Regulation; Homesharing; Tourism; Business And Government; Public-private Partnership; Entrepreneurship; Business and Government Relations; Government Administration; Public Sector; City; Tourism Industry; Public Administration Industry; Travel Industry; Netherlands; Europe

Citation

Weiss, Mitchell, Emer Moloney, and Vincent Dessain. "Airbnb in Amsterdam (A)." Harvard Business School Case 817-013, October 2016. (Revised March 2017.)
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About The Author

Mitchell B. Weiss

Entrepreneurial Management
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Related Work

    • October 2016
    • Faculty Research

    Airbnb in Amsterdam (B)

    By: Mitchell Weiss, Emer Moloney and Vincent Dessain
    • October 2016 (Revised March 2017)
    • Faculty Research

    Airbnb in Amsterdam (A)

    By: Mitchell Weiss, Emer Moloney and Vincent Dessain
Related Work
  • Airbnb in Amsterdam (B) By: Mitchell Weiss, Emer Moloney and Vincent Dessain
  • Airbnb in Amsterdam (A) By: Mitchell Weiss, Emer Moloney and Vincent Dessain
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